Phenomenology 2020 Symposium

Ultralight Boson Dark Matter Constraints from Superradiance Leveraging the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration's Observations of M87*

5 May 2020, 14:00

15m

Parallel Talk Dark Matter DM III

Speaker

Peter Denton (Niels Bohr International Academy)

Description

The initial data from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) on M87${}^{\ast }$, the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, provide direct observational information on its mass, spin, and accretion disk properties. A combination of the EHT data and other constraints provide evidence that M87${}^{\ast }$ has a mass $\sim 6.5\times {10}^9$ $M_{\odot }$ and dimensionless spin parameter $|a^{\ast }|\ge 0.5$. These determinations disfavor ultra light bosons of mass ${\mu }_b\sim {10}^{-21}$ eV via the phenomenon of superradiance, within the range considered for fuzzy dark matter, invoked to explain dark matter distribution on $\sim$kpc scales. Future observations of M87${}^{\ast }$ could be expected to strengthen our conclusions.

Presentation materials

Denton_Pheno_ULB_2020.pdf